#490 Maggie Freleng with Tom Rhodes

Tom Rhodes loves sports.

I wrestled. I just wrestled year round.

I get on the I have a freestyle team and wrestled the Olympic style and a thousand years ago won the state freestyle championship and second Greco Roman.

What way class were you were you wrestled?

I was one seventy five for that tournament and I didn't cut any weight at all.

Tom didn't have to work out. He worked on a farm.

I just decided I'm going to go in there farm strong and farm strong.

I like that. I met Tom at the Annual Innocence Network Conference in April twenty twenty four. You look like you could be a sportscaster. I was like someone cut of prison was such a nice st No, he does, Yeah, okay.

I had one viable tooth in my head when I when I left prison, and the rest of them needed a lot of work, and so I had no choice.

But I had a lot of work done.

Well, now you have your sportscaster.

Looks I'm hoping to land something after talking to you. My name is Tom Rhodes, and I was wrongly incarcerated for eight nine hundred and thirty two days about twenty four and a half years.

From Love of for Good This is Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling today Tom Rhodes. Tom Rhodes was born in June nineteen fifty nine to Lois and Daniel Rhodes.

My parents farmed and my mom worked for the bank in the little town of Dunk, Iowa.

Tom is the oldest of four kids. He was twelve when his sister was born.

Kind of kind of grew up in a work hard, play hard environment.

There was always work to be done on the farm. Tom's brother Ron says, they were constantly on the go.

You know, Dad would holler up in the morning, boys, time to get up, and you know we were expected to be downstairs and you know, ten or fifteen minutes. So we were moving equipment from farm to farm or out fixing equipment.

Between livestock and raising cattle.

And harvesting or planting.

But really wonderful life.

Actually, Tom probably had the hardest of everyone because it was less automated when he was younger, so it was a lot more physical labor. And he was he was, like I'd say, probably my dad's right hand man.

So are you getting emotional right now?

Yeah?

I just I guess just thinking back to the way our lives were, Just thinking back about, you know, how we all kind of worked together, and how good my parents were, you know, to of us all.

Where did life take you?

Yeah?

I graduated from Webster City High School in nineteen seventy seven, and I graduated from westmar University with the sociology, psychology, and a business minor.

Tom wanted to be a wrestling coach and teacher. That was my plan, but his plans changed.

And I ended up going into agrisales in the seed and fertiliz in industry.

Still Tom thrived. He was good at sales.

He's just got a really charismatic personality. He's very outgoing, he's fun he's funny. He just has a way like of just you know, making you feel at ease.

But before his success as a big time sales VP, Tom was just a college kid who one day saw a pretty girl.

I met Jane at college my junior year.

It was nineteen seventy nine.

And she was a farm girl from Northwest Aisle and five seven, blue eyes.

With long blonde hair, just really pretty. Tom was smitten.

She had a kind of a down home country girl flavor.

Not even a year after they met, Tom and Jane were married in nineteen eighty So you met Jane and you guys were like had over heels.

Yeah, it was.

It was kind of a quick romance and we loved each other and each other's families.

It was a good bit.

I think that we had so much in common from like a work ethic and you know, be good to family and love one another. It was just we were raised the same way. I really think that was the essence of it.

They were always like joking around with one another, like he would tease.

Her Tom's brother Ron.

Again, she was just probably the sweetest huh person. You just sense that she loved you and she cared about you.

It sounds like she was more than just your brother's wife. You really felt like she was part of your family.

Oh yeah, she was just an amazing person. She had such a great spirit about her when you were around her. That's what I would say about Jane.

In nineteen eighty two, they had their first son, Eric, and their second son, Jason. In nineteen eighty seven. Tom and Jane and the boys moved all around for Tom's work in agricultural sales, but Eventually they landed in Mankato, Minnesota in the early nineties.

The kids really flourished in the school district there, and Jason and Eric were both in sports football, did a little wrestling and basketball, and so I tried to coach and be a part of things, whether it be assistant coach or whatever I could do to step up.

To be there.

For a couple of years in the early nineties, Tom and Jane landed on hard times.

We went through a little bit of a rough patch communication wise. I don't think things were as good as they could.

They were also struggling financially.

People go through difficult times and marriages. I've been married for eighteen years, and I'm sure that they had difficult times, But it wasn't like I ever felt like they if they felt like they didn't love one another or whatever. I feel like they were both the type of people that would come together and say, hey, well, what are we going to do about this? What's best for the boys, I think is what they would be thinking in that

By nineteen ninety six, things were on the up. Jane got a job with good pay and benefits.

I was doing well my job and getting bigger bonus checks, and we sold our first house and bought a house that was completely redone with a great room build on a new basement underneath of it that had had a fire, and it was kind of our dream place.

Tom was VP at the seed company. I mentioned earlier.

We were doing better than we had and.

Our life was and.

We were happy and felt like we were also enjoying the success of our careers.

They had finally made it. I mean, I'll had a boat, you must have been doing well.

We we had had a couple of different boats, but we mainly had had jet skis and done that and tubed and wakeboarded behind the bigger jet skis and stuff we we did. We did a lot of stuff on the water. Ever since we moved to Minnesota, we kind of lived on the water.

I went up to vacation with them in northern Minnesota and the family basically my parents and Tom's family had rented a house on a lake, and I went up there for two or three days and spent time with them boating and fishing, and they just had a good time. You know, they just were down to earth but like to have fun. And you know, we were growing up, we didn't do a lot of vacationing and stuff like that.

Tom and Jane loved being out on the water, and when the boys were asleep.

Jane and I would have a drink or two and go out.

On the night of August second, the family was on another vacation.

We had let the boys always play in the pool at the end, and that night they just were out from all the you know, vacationing and stuff.

Just tired out.

So Tom and Jane left the boys in their hotel and took the boat out on Green Lake for a moonlight ride.

We were just relaxing and talking. It was so peaceful, and we were discussing about you know, getting back and getting the boys started in school, and you know, the sports season was going to be kicking off for football, so it was a lot of fun things to look forward to.

It was getting late, so they decided to call it a night.

And we went north and that's when she fell out.

Tom says he saw Jane lean forward. She seemed to have dropped something later we.

Found out was an ear ring, and she went to pick something up. I thought she was just turning to set down beside me. The moon was to the right. I looked, glanced the right to navigate, look back, and saw her shoes going over.

Tom says he was frantic.

I was in emergency mode trying to save Jane and was looking. I looked so hard, I swear I thought I saw her, and and so I jumped out and didn't find anything, and quickly learned that I had jumped off the back of the boat with the point facing south and pushed the boat away from me. And I had almost I was so exhausted from what had.

Happened and searching in the water.

I almost did make it back to the boat myself, but he did and then I I know I did circles.

I don't know if.

I zigzag too but I tried to cover the area because I thought she had to be there and if she was unconscious, I could maybe find her floater. I need CPR, so I thought I could savor but I didn't find her.

Tom eventually beached the boat and ran into a restaurant for help.

The night clerk let me in and I was drans from head to toe, exhausted, trying to talk and almost throwing up all at the same time.

Soon law enforcement showed up and helped in the search. They also questioned Tom about the night, but he had other things on his mind.

I kept telling him, I want to go back out and search for my wife. I want to go back out on my boat. You guys have got my boat in the other boat. I want to go be back and be part.

Of a search. And they wouldn't let me.

So that was probably the most difficult thing, other than telling the boys obviously they're boys.

Still talked in bed.

That was the hardest thing.

I mean to, you know, look into my son's beautiful blue eyes and.

I have to see that kind of pain.

The next morning, some fishermen came across a body in the water. It was Jane.

I'd have done anything.

Did not have to don't have to tell them that about their losing their mom.

Tavas is my partner Dan dan Her telling hey, Todd, Dan.

How good are you.

Almost two weeks after Jane's body was found, police brought Tom into the Candy O High Share station for questioning.

This has been the hardest thing in while life, be losing my wife for sixteen years.

And police had questioned Tom the night Jane fell into the water, and now, following a few days of investigation, they wanted to go over that night again.

He said, you're not under arrest anything like. We asked you to come down here to talk to us about the accident because that night it was confusing. There's a lot of things going on.

And they also had a report from the medical examiner.

The body's brought down to doctor McGee. Did you ever hear of him? Okay, he's a forensic pathologist in Ramsey County, all right.

Right.

At the beginning of the case, at the beginning of the investigation, the medical examiner didn't really have any medical evidence to support the idea that Tom was guilty of premeditated murder.

This is Jim Mayer, legal director at the Great North Innocence.

Project, but he had suspicions.

Suspicions influenced by the theories of the police.

When you when you went out there that evening with your wife, did you have any intentions to harm her?

No?

Absolutely, no way. Okay, how did those And I'm hoping you can help me out here if you could really think how that marked gotten on her face?

The first doctor to look at Jane's body found bruising on her face, head, and a cut to the right side of her mouth. Then the forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy, doctor Michael McGee, found hemorrhaging beneath the facial injuries. Her death was initially ruled undetermined, so the police kept digging.

Was there trouble in the marriage?

Did you guys ever talk about a divorce? Was there an ever period in your marriage caught?

Did the family have debts? Was there life insurance involved?

Did you have any type of insurance like on your morgine if somebody passes away that that helps pay the.

War each Remember Tom and Jane had struggled financially for a few years right before this, so they found that, you.

Know, these are all totally commonplace things, but they just they weaved all of that stuff together into a story of a man who is desperate and wanted to get out of his marriage but couldn't afford it and wanted the life insurance money.

Police had also found out about the rocky years in their relationship.

Just funny.

You know what we.

Learned, Tom, is that there were some rough spots in your marriage. Okay, and there were, but those rules were long behind us.

I haven't haven't had any problems recently.

On top of everything, police also said Tom was quote not grieving properly.

Yeah, imagine that. That's quite a bold statement. How do you tell if someone's had a loss how they should grieve. I think that's a personal thing. And I totally a grieved with my family, with my sons and took care of them and and did my best. And I kept a relationship with Deane's family inform them. As things were unfolding with the legal system as well.

As the months passed with all these new suspicions being brought up by the police, the pathologist, doctor Michael McGee, decided to give his initial report on Jane's death a second look to see if he could figure out what had happened to.

Jane becoming his own version of a detective.

Marriage troubles, debts, alleged suspicious grieving behavior.

What you end up having is a medical examiner who, in his initial review concludes that the medical findings don't support homicide, looking into what the detectives they're looking at, and then reverse himself and decide, yes, now the medical findings support homicide.

Doctor Michael McGee changed his findings from undetermined to homicide. After more than a year of investigation, police had their prime suspect in sight, and on December ninth, nineteen ninety seven, a grand jury indicted Thomas Rhodes for murder.

We didn't know how to respond. We didn't know, you know, how to help him.

This is Tom's brother Ron again.

And it was I think it was so hard that time in our life, thinking back to the way it affected us as a family, the way it affected Tom and his family, his young family, the way it affected my mom and dad. They were very scared. One Tom was indicted just because you know, he had always tried to cooperate and we just never thought that, you know, my brother would do anything to hurt Jane intentionally.

Tom went to trial the following year, in July nineteen ninety eight. He had the support of Ron and his parents and many family and friends who believed Tom wouldn't have committed such a crime, but the trial prosecutor, John Doherty said otherwise. He said Tom and Jane had a lot of recent debt from their new lifestyle, the house, the boat, in a new car. Docerty also brought up

The prosecution's case was largely built around the testimony of doctor Michael McGee. That was really the lynchpin of the state's case. What doctor McGee testified to was that he could tell from the condition of Jane's body that there had been a struggle on the boat.

Remember, there was bruising, hemorrhaging, and a cut on Jane's face. Doctor McGee the injuries were the results of a fight between Tom and Jane.

And he also testified that he knew he could tell from the condition of Jane's body that she had been struck multiple times by the boat after she had fallen into the water. That was very powerful evidence for the jury to hear.

And doctor McGhee wasn't done.

He brought out a clay model and displayed it on a table for the jury to look at, and this clay model showed awful discoloration all over Jane's face and head.

Doctor McGee used a life size clay model of Jane's head depicting a severely bruised face to show that her injuries couldn't have been accidental.

And anyone who would look at this model would be horrified to think about what must have happened to this person.

Tom couldn't believe the things he was being accused of doing to Jane, grabbing her by the neck, pushing her over, and running her over multiple times with the boat.

I knew it was a lie, but my attorney wasn't prepared to handle doctor McGee.

Tom's defense attorney was Michael College. Although Tom says that College did a poor job on Cross, he did have a qualified expert. He called doctor Lindsay Thomas to refute doctor McGee.

Doctor Lindsay Thomas pretty much went against McGee one hundred percent and.

Refuted everything that they had said.

Doctor Lindsay Thomas testified that Jane's face indeed had internal hemorrhaging on both sides, but not because of multiple intentional blows with the boat. She said, it was because the blood from the forehead injury dreamed into her face and settled there.

Anyone who knows about drowning victims and forensic pathology will tell you where you have a drowning victim who has been floating face down for thirteen hours or however long it was, you're going to have the pooling of blood and certain areas. And so this doesn't reflect that she

And that's not new science. In nineteen ninety six, that should have been known.

Absolutely absolutely should have been known.

After two weeks of trial, the jury was sent to deliberate.

I was really really concerned, But I also believe that you couldn't be convicted if you're innocent. I thought that there was enough that they could see through doctor McGhee and hopefully believe, you know, doctor Thomas, what I was wrong.

On July twenty ninth, nineteen ninety eight, Thomas Rhodes was convicted a first degree premeditated murder and sentenced to mandatory life in prison. How did Tom's conviction affect you all?

Just heartbreaking, you know, first of all to lose my sister in law. Yeah, I think that was just the hardest thing. She was such a good mob, such a good person, and seeing that together and they're boys, and just it was just a heartache for I mean that it was sore.

When Tom Rhodes got to prison in his late thirties, he says he was completely out of his element.

I was raised by really compassionate people and kindness.

That's kind of seeing this weakness.

So you have to fight, you have to stand up for yourself, you have to do whatever, and so I just fought and didn't wait always.

Tom felt like he was becoming a shell of who he was. But when Ron and his parents visited, he was reminded.

So he just tell us, Hey, when you get in here, you can give me a hug. Please give me a hug. You just Tom would just want a hug and wanted to have a little bit of contact with us and tell us that he loved us and how much he appreciated us, you know, coming there.

Ron says, particularly his parents.

They were troopers, i mean driving you know, five six hours one way, you know, and over years and years they did that to support Tom and be there for all of us. Really, if I could make a trip, they would help pay for the expenses to make sure that we could go visit Tom. And you know, it was just it was hard. It was hard to see

But Tom was putting on a face. He says, he didn't want his family, especially the boys, worrying about him.

I actually had two instances where I was wanting to check.

Out, just couldn't couldn't take it anymore, and was severely depressed by it all.

For sure.

I put a canteen bag rope over electrical conduit in my cell and still water and tried and woke up. The sharpness of the metal above the conduit cut it, and I woke up unconscious with what remained of my a tamethrope around my neck near the toilet in myself.

Your boys know that I don't think so they're gonna know now.

I'm not proud proud of that fact, and I don't want them to think that I, you know, was taking the cower's way out. I was just in a dark place and was missing them and my family so much.

But Tom decided he wasn't going to let depression win. I want to ask you about the dog program. That was something you credited to kind of saving you in there.

Yeah.

I worked as a mental health mentor, and after your seg free there a year, I had the opportunity to get in the dog program. I mainly worked with large male pit bulls and some small pit bulls. Yeah, mine too, you know, seventy eighty pound big pit bulls were just so wonderful for my soul. While I was helping them become adopted, I was enjoying the pleasure of training them, and they got good homes and I got to have a dog and myself. So youah, beat that. That's good medicine.

Tom also started fighting again, but this time for his innocence.

Tom wrote to us a long time ago, more than a decade ago, asking for our assistance.

Jim says, when he and the Great North Innocence Project started looking at Tom's case, something big stood out.

Doctor Lindsay Thomas, who was a medical examiner forensic pathologist who testified at Tom's trial, was always convinced and remains convinced to this day that Tom was innocent and that the testimony against him at his trial, the forensic testimony, was totally off base. And so she was a big champion of Tom's from the beginning in convincing us that his case was worth the look and something we needed to be involved in.

But they had a big challenge the.

Way Minnesota law works in these cases. Once it's been over two years since your conviction's final. You can't even get into court to present your new evidence unless you can satisfy the court that it proves your innocence by clear and convincing evidence. Now, how are you going to do that? In Tom's case, where it's an entirely circumstantial case, How can he prove that negative that he didn't cause Jane's death. I challenge you to come up with the

The years passed and Tom filed multiple post conviction reliefs, all were denied. Tom's father passed in twenty fourteen, and within a year his mom got really sick.

The nursing home didn't want us to take her out to go visit Tom, and they said no. She has a hard time swallowing food and different things. She was so frail, she weighed about ninety pounds. She just felt like skin and bones. But she was determined that she wanted to go see my brother.

So Ron took his mom to see Tom.

It was the last time he ever saw my mom.

Both of Tom's parents died while he was still in prison.

Was super hard. Knowing, you know, how hard they fought to free Tom, and how amazing they were at supporting all of our family and just you know, being so strong to help us get through things. Was tragic.

Yeah, all right, hello everyone, My name's Keith Ellison. I'm the Attorney General for the state of Minnesota.

Finally, in twenty twenty one, the Minnesota Conviction Review Unit was established as a partnership between the Great North Innocence Project and the Minnesota Attorney General's Office.

Every criminal case has room for error because the justice system is run by human beings, and human beings make mistakes, do the wrong thing, and don't always get it right.

Tom's case was selected to be reinvestigated.

We ended up with nine expert opinions. Nine of them all said doctor McGee was wrong. They would never call this a homicide. We got the who's who of forensic pathologists with specific expertise in drowning. We came forward with new evidence from new studies from recent years about the physical findings you would expect to see in accidental drowning victims, which mapped on perfectly to what you saw in Jane's case.

They all concluded that she was not struck multiple times with the boat. They found she was likely knocked out by a single blow when she fell out of the boat, or when the boat unintentionally hit her as Tom searched for her, an accidental drowning. Like Tom said, Jim says that doctor McGee wasn't using science when he made his homicide determination. He was working backwards from the police suspicions to make his findings fit.

Totally unmoored from the way medical examiners should be doing their job.

And McGee has a reputation, now, am I correct?

He does? A federal judge had actually found that McGee had given misleading testimony in that case and noted the fact that doctor McGee had a troubling pattern of providing false or inaccurate testimony in court. And I'll even say, for our organization, Great North Inistan's project, we are not a large organization, but we've gotten three convictions vacated where doctor McGee was the medical examiner who did the autopsy and testified in their cases.

The investigation also uncovered a Brady violation. The prosecution withheld a memo of a conversation with doctor McGee in which he admits he's unsure if Jane was struck once or multiple times.

This was totally different from what the state ends up arguing at trial, which is this is premeditated murder because we know she was struck multiple times.

Totally inconsistent with what doctor McGee had said earlier. After twenty five years in prison, on January thirteenth, twenty twenty three, a district court judge vacated Thomas Rhodes's murder conviction. However, Tom is still a convicted felon. He agreed to an Alfred plea for a lesser manslaughter conviction for driving with negligence.

Life, he did what anyone in his situation would do and he took the deal that was offered to him.

And that's why it still comes up on the record.

That will still come up on a record because it's a felony conviction right for now, to working on that, we'll see what happens.

Sneaky Tom was the first person released under the partnership with the Minnesota Conviction Review Unit and the Great North Innocence Project.

Was unbelievable to see him finally be able to walk through those doors. Sorry to be a little sappy here, it's a lot thinking back of all the things that our family went through, all the things that Tom went through. It's just it's hard. It's hard to relive that.

It was awesome, it was surreal. I just I couldn't believe it. I was very emotional.

All of us were.

Jim, you've just been crying over there.

Yeah, don't look at me like is he sweating or is it tears? This guy gets every time. He's the worst tissues.

I didn't realize I was going to get this emotional.

Jim and the people at the Innisen's Project had been there for me in ways I could have never imagined.

While Tom was in prison, he took up art to help survive.

I had about two hundred and fifty paintings. I painted places like the favorite road in the country, to where we mushroom hunted as a little boy, to things I did with my sons and and our life animals, a lot of animal art.

Jim and folks of the Great North Innocence Project thought since Tom has struggled to find it job with his felony conviction.

And unlike the greedy person they portrayed, did not spend any money from my house, from any of my assets. I put it in a trust for my son's education. Make sure that they got an education, and we're taken care of.

Why not get Tom's art out of storage and sell it.

They helped me put a business together called Thomas D. Galleries, and I'm selling prints and originals and I'm been taking pictures of some animals and looking forward to maybe doing some commissions of people's pets and stuff as well.

Tom struggles with PTSD from his time in prison, but after almost two years of freedom, he's feeling better adjusted.

I can really enjoy this freedom where I went through a lot this last for the first year. But I just want to credit, you know, people that have been there for me, like the Great North Innisance Project. My son's my friends, and I have six grandkids and I'm just loving that I can have a relationship with them outside of a prison visit room.

And Tom is especially just loving being free.

One of my biggest toys is just being able to hop in my truck, my old truck, and just go someplace when I want to, you know, not having limitations.

Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the links in the episode description to see how you can help. And please consider checking out Tom's gallery Thomas D. Galleries to support him in his transition to freedom. Go to Thomas D. Galleries dot com or check out the link in our episode description. This episode was written by me Maggie Freeling, with story editing and sound designed by senior